A federal judge on Tuesday ordered that the near shutdown of Voice of America was illegal and has ordered the government to reinstate more than 1,000 people who were placed on leave from the media organization.
The order by District Judge Royce Lamberth amounted to a sharp rebuke to the administration, which has aggressively sought to shrink and remake VOA through Kari Lake, the ally of President Donald Trump who has served as CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
Lamberth said in a pair of rulings that Lake’s moves to close the agency violated federal administrative law and directed that the employees return to work by March 23. He also ordered a resumption of international broadcasting, which the U.S. has used for decades to promote press freedom around the world.
Beginning in early 2025, hundreds of journalists were placed on administrative leave and then targeted for layoffs, with more than 600 cuts announced by summer and ultimately roughly 85 percent of staff eliminated across the agency. The reductions were so deep that VOA, which once broadcast in nearly 50 languages to hundreds of millions of people, was pared down to a skeleton operation with only a handful of language services still running.
Lamberth issued a scathing review of the government’s “flagrant and nearly year-long refusal” to uphold statutory requirements set by Congress, adding that Lake “thumbed her nose” at the requirements.